Electrical and structural properties of indium tin oxide films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

The relation between electrical and structural properties of indium tin oxide (ITO) films prepared by pulsed laser deposition with and without in situ laser irradiation is examined. The residual stresses of the films were estimated from x-ray diffraction patterns measured by grazing-incidence asymmetric Bragg and grazing-incidence x-ray diffraction geometries. For the films prepared without in situ irradiation, the residual stress depended on oxygen pressure (PO2) during deposition and had minimum around PO2 of 1.3 Pa, which coincided with the optimum PO2 for growing the lowest resistivity films. The resistivity was only slightly improved with an increase of substrate temperature (Ts) because a large residual stress was introduced. In contrast, the ITO films prepared with in situ laser irradiation showed very low resistivity (ρ<10−4 Ω cm) which can be attributed to the high crystallinity and low residual stress.